Research on genetic factors underlying the decline of the brain has also identified 13 drugs already approved to counter their effect.
What factors do they determine the rapidity with which the brain ages? Using Machine Learning, a group of scientists from Zhejiang University, China, has identified 64 genes that with their business contribute to deciding how quickly the brain decline is left. The news, published on Science Advancesarrives in the Brain week (Brain Awareness Week), a global initiative that invites us to reflect on the importance of neuroscience and to support research in this field.
The help of the AI. The registry age does not always correspond perfectly to the biological age of the brain: the difference between the two is known how Brain Age Gap (literally “brain gap”). To understand which genetic factors make this gap faster and wider, scientists have trained A Deep Learning modelthat is, a set of many levels of neural networks that imitate the functioning of a human brain, on a medical information database of almost 39,000 subjects monitored by the Biobank UK.
Therefore, they combined the results of the first analysis with the data on the activity of over 2,600 genes in blood cells and over 2,900 in the brain tissue, coming to determine 64 genes whose activity is clearly connected to the Brain Age Gap. Some of them orchestrale of cell death or blood coagulation processes. Of the 64 found, 7 have a particularly marked effect on brain aging.
Possible drugs. At this point, the researchers identified 466 compounds, or already approved as drugs or in the course of experimentation in clinical studies, which target 29 of the 64 genes found and which could contrast their activity, slowing down brain aging.
Among these compounds There are 13, already on the market as drugs or supplementswhich act on the 64 genes and on the proteins they produce and which have given encouraging results in clinical trials against aging. For example, Rapamycin, whose effect on the ability to delay the aging of the ovaries, or hydrocortisone, a corticosteroid with an anti -inflammatory activity, normally used to treat eczema or some autoimmune diseases, is being studied.
Genetics is not everything. New experimental studies will have to establish whether the 13 compounds identified have a specific effect against brain agingbut in the meantime, work provides a basis to continue studies on genetic factors that determine brain decline.
However, it is worth remembering that the simple fact of having a certain genetic profile is not enough to determine If those genes are expressed.
The genes can be activated or silenced by several lifestyle factors, such as habit of smoke or alcohol or the level of physical activity, factors that can deeply affect how young the brain remains young.
